1983 Was The Year That The U.S. And Russia Almost Had A Nuclear War

Washington Post: In 1983 ‘war scare,’ Soviet leadership feared nuclear surprise attack by U.S.

A nuclear weapons command exercise by NATO in November 1983 prompted fear in the leadership of the Soviet Union that the maneuvers were a cover for a nuclear surprise attack by the United States, triggering a series of unparalleled Soviet military re­sponses, according to a top-secret U.S. intelligence review that has just been declassified.

“In 1983, we may have inadvertently placed our relations with the Soviet Union on a hair trigger,” the review concluded.

That autumn has long been regarded as one of the most tense moments of the Cold War, coming after the Soviet Union shot down a South Korean civilian airliner in September and as the West was preparing to deploy Pershing II intermediate-range and ground-launched cruise missiles in Europe in November. But there has been a long-running debate about whether the period known as the “war scare” was a moment of genuine danger or a period of bluster for propaganda purposes.

The review concluded that for Soviet leaders, the war scare was real, and that U.S. intelligence post­mortems did not take it seriously enough.

WNU Editor: This article brings back a lot of bad and scary memories. Was the Soviet leadership paranoid that the U.S. would launch a surprise nuclear attack against the Soviet Union in the early 1980s ....definitely. Growing up I never believed that the U.S. would launch a surprise nuclear attack .... but my father's generation (and older) who lived through the Second World War .... they definitely believed that such an event was not only possible .... but probable. I still recall the day after the U.S. installed Pershing missiles in West Germany .... my father and I had a terrible argument when he said that the Soviet Union should launch a military attack to knock out these sites .... using nuclear weapons if necessary. To him ... the idea that the Germans had nuclear weapons on their soil .... it was unacceptable .... and if he felt like that, I knew for a fact that many in the Politburo probably felt the same way. Fortunately .... President Reagan's focus on the Soviet Union made him realize that among their many faults the old Soviet guard were also prisoners of their history .... and he toned down the rhetoric as well as used back channels to placate and calm the Soviet leadership. Years later when President Reagan's diary and writings were published .... I specifically read what he was thinking about at this time .... and man-o-man was he on the money. The rest is now history .... Yuri Andropov passed away a few months later .... paving the way for Konstantin Chernenko to assume the leadership of the country, who in turn laid the groundwork for Gorbachev to replace him a year later.